Dave Reeves, who had been working for Sound City between 1966-68, had started his own company called Hiwatt and by January 1969 he began making custom 100w heads for local musicians and bands like Jethro Tull and The Who are seen using Hiwatts in May later that year.

David used only two Hiwatt heads throughout the autumn of ’69 and the more familiar three heads setup appeared sometime during the summer in 1970.

They also use an ECC83/12AX7 in the PI position, which again provides a bit more gain.

The major cosmetic difference was that they started to use rocker switches for power and standby in place of the original chrome toggles.

Details of the amps reveal that the normal channel inputs were simply covered up with tape (the brill/norm combo requires that you only use the brilliance input once the two are combined).

Annoyed, the roadie carried the head backstage and brought it back. ” and the roadie had to replace it with an apology!

This was also the case in 1987 for the Momentary Lapse of Reason album and tour, but he soon replaced the Fenders in favour of his old Hiwatts prior to the second leg of the tour in 1988.

By now, Pete Cornish had modified the amps adding extra input points allowing David to just use the power amp stage with the Alembic F-2B acting as the main preamp for the whole rig.

Another funny story dates from the Earl’s Court shows in May 1973 where the sound crew reported that during some of David’s solos his rig wasn’t in the PA at all. For the Animals 1977 tour David had three Hiwatt heads, again two mains and one spare and a 1960’s Marshall 100w plexi.

1979 – 1982 The setup for The Wall was pretty much the same as both Dark Side and Animals with the custom rack including three Hiwatt heads (two mains and one spare) powering four WEM cabs.